Tell It Slant
by varietyofwords
Summary: Linstead plus baby plus Voight. Oneshot. Future fic. "Sometimes I think the best thing I'll ever do for her is give her Jay as her dad. He's crazy about her."


**Author's Note:** So many people asked for linstead + baby, but I'm not really known for fluff and I'm still very much so in the post-2x23 mindset that I ended up with linstead + baby + Voight. The title of this fic comes from an Emily Dickenson poem entitled "Tell all the truth but tell it slant".

* * *

Normally, he'd pound on the door with such fervor and harshness that it would begin to sound as though the door – wood or not – might splinter under the weight of his force. Punctuate the slam of his fist against the door with a gruff voice calling out for them to open up because he means business and, truth be told, because he likes to see the panicked look on Halstead's face when he opens the door. Enjoys knowing that he still holds some sway over the guy who definitely did not listen when Voight told him that Erin was off limits.

Except, tonight, when his soft knocks against the metal door identified as 310 go unanswered, he merely pulls out his cellphone with his right hand and furrows his brows. Erin's text clearly said he should come over after shift tonight, and Hank glances back up from the phone to the door as he considers whether or not he should call her.

Her car was out front. Halstead's, too. And it's not like them to sneak out on him. Sneak around, yes, but not up and leave when Erin, at least, knows he's coming over. So Hank slides the phone back into his coat pocket, tightens his grip on the casserole dish in his left hand, and lightly knocks against the door once again.

One knock. Two.

"Hey, Sarge," a voice punctuates the second knock drawing Hank's attention away from the closed door to the man making his way down the hallway towards him. A white, plastic laundry basket is tucked under one arm and a slightly blank look has settled across Halstead's face as he fishes his keys out of his pocket, as a yawn acts as a conjunction between his greeting and the next words out of his mouth.

"Erin's asleep," Jay explains as he slides the key into the lock. Throws the deadbolt with a quick twist of his wrist; pushes open the door by dropping the laundry basket down on the handle and bumping his shoulder against the solid, metal door. "But, uh, we can watch the game or something until she's up."

Voight gruffly mumbles what Halstead can only assume is agreement since he can't really hear him as Hank follows the younger man into the apartment. Hank's careful to shut the door quietly behind him; throws the deadbolt even though he knows the crime rates for this part of Chicago off the top of his head.

Halstead's shoes are perfectly lined up by the front door, and Voight looks at the smaller-sized sneakers and boots tossed haphazardly on top of Halstead's shoes with a smirk because Camille spent years trying to get Erin to put her shoes away and it doesn't look like Halstead's fared much better in that battle.

"You want a beer?"

The question is called from around the corner, from the kitchen to where Voight still stands in the entryway. Voight frowns at how loud Halstead is, and he tosses a cautious glance towards the open entrance to the bedroom on the other side of the fireplace. It's been fifteen years since Erin last lived with him, but the memory of how she was all salt and vinegar when he'd wake her up for school is still as fresh in his mind as though it was yesterday.

Yet Jay seems unperturbed as he drops the laundry basket on the counter and wrenches open the fridge, as he fishes a brown bottle from the back of the fridge and holds it out to Hank. The label is one of those microbrewers rather than a pilsner in a white can like Voight is accustomed to drinking, and the older man seizes on the opportunity to rib on the younger as he slides onto one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. As he drops the casserole dish onto the counter beside him; as he clasps his hand on Halstead's shoulder and gives it a joking squeeze.

"My house, my beer," Jay replies with a smile that falters as he reaches into the laundry bin, as his hand curls around the baby monitor he's trying to fish out from amidst the pile of freshly washed onesies, socks, and swaddling blankets.

Voight watches over the rim of the bottle as Jay gives the baby monitor a for longing glance before setting it aside on the counter, before reaching back into the basket to pull out a pink and white swaddling blanket. And then the younger man's voice drops so low – lower than it needs to be given the quietness within the apartment – that Hank has to strain to hear him say, "I'd give you something stronger, but Erin doesn't want the hard stuff in the house now."

There's a long pause where Hank watches Jay careful fold the blanket into smaller and smaller squares, where he turns Jay's words over and over again in his head. The younger man's shoulders are slumped with the weight of his worry, and his eyes are hazy with sleep deprivation. He looks like he's been tossing rocks at Erin's window at three in the morning even as he stands in the middle of her – their – kitchen folding blankets and baby clothes.

"How's she doin'?" Hank questions as he sets the bottle aside, as concern pulls his features downward into a frown. He crosses his arms over his chest – the tough guy stance Camille used to tease him about using when someone was telling him something he didn't want to hear – and leans backwards against the back of the black leather barstool waiting for Jay's answer.

"She–It's hard to tell. I know she loves her, but sometimes Erin gets this look in her eyes and I have no idea what's going on upstairs," Halstead quietly confesses with a shrug. There's another long pause as Jay sets aside the carefully folded blanket, as he reaches into the basket and pulls out another. A red, white, and blue number that Ruzek and Burgess handed to Erin on her last day in the bullpen with a shared smile that told Voight there was more to that gift than diehard allegiance to that sports team Ruzek's always yammering on about.

"I was, uh, watching this thing on TV the other night, and this doctor on there was talking about, uh, postpartum depression," Jay explains as he folds the blanket into the same size and shape as the pink and white one stacked on the counter in front of Voight. The detective never looks up to meet Hank's eye as he sets the second blanket aside and reaches for another, as he continues to fold the laundry and slowly elaborate on his answer. "He was saying it has more to do with hormone imbalances than with being a bad mom."

"So you think Erin's got this postpartum thing?" Voight gruffly asks before taking another swig from the beer bottle.

"I don't know," Jay replies as he drops the folded blanket onto the stack and glances quickly over towards the darkened bedroom. His right hand moves to rub his fingers against his forehead; a nervous tick that Voight has only seen a few times before – when Halstead came to him after Erin quit, when the two of them were waiting for Voight's blessing, when Erin handed Hank a black and white photograph and said he needed to get on board because the pixelated, oval mass in the middle of the picture would be here in about twenty-seven weeks.

And then Jay is back to being steady, back to fishing the tiny clothes Hank hasn't seen since Justin and Olive's boy was born three years ago out of the laundry basket, back to carefully folding them into tiny squares. After a couple of minutes watching Jay fold clothes while Hank takes swig after swig from his beer, he finally gives up on waiting for the detective to elaborate further and decides to squeeze him just a little bit in the hope he'll crack. That he'll either start telling Voight what he thinks or, at the very least, tell him to fuck off again because Voight can do whatever he wants but he's not giving up on her. Not until he hears straight from Erin that she's done.

"You think Erin's a bad mom, Jay?"

Jay's head snaps up almost before Hank can finish the question, and the closest thing he's got to a son-in-law – because what do you call the man who knocked up the closest thing you have to a daughter yet hasn't married her? – is emphatically shaking his head side to side.

"No, no, no," Jay retorts quickly. His eyes have narrowed, darkened, and Voight can practically see his jaw lock as Jay moves into the defensive, unwavering position he's taken on every other time the two have buttheads. "I think Erin thinks she's a bad mom. I think my daughter is almost four weeks old and should have a name by now. I think—"

The shrill wail sounds in stereo as the noise emanates from the baby monitor standing on the counter in front of Hank and from the dark bedroom behind him. Voight barely has time to glance over his shoulder before Halstead is storming past him; unfolded laundry and concerns about Erin forgotten as he rushes into the bedroom off the living where and towards the screaming baby.

Halstead's voice comes through the baby monitor as a muffled, static mess. Nowhere near as clear as when the team passes messages via the radio and difficult to tease out over the sound of the baby's cries. Although there are words and phrases here and there that Voight is able to pick up – Halstead telling Erin that he's got the baby, Erin sounding sleepy and disoriented over Jay saying her dad's here – as he takes another swig from his beer and lets his eyes sweep over the apartment.

Halstead's red and white motorcycle painting has replaced the framed prints that used to hang over Erin's dining room table, and the baby's car seat remains parked atop the table where it was placed when Erin and the baby came home from Chicago Med. Two, small blankets – one pink and the other purple – are draped over the back of the dark gray couch, and the folded stroller leans up against the bookshelf to the left of the fireplace.

And Voight has to hand it to Erin and Jay because their place looks nothing like his and Camille's did when they brought home Justin. Back then, there had been stacks of dirty dishes in the sink, a pile of unwashed laundry near the basement door, an infant who lacked utter control of his body but screamed bloody murder all the time, and two dumb kids who had no idea what they were doing.

"Hey, Hank," the slightly gravelly voice calls out drawing Voight's attention from his thoughts to the woman lethargically making her way through the living room. She's running her fingers through dirty blonde hair, working on pulling her hair into a ponytail as the oversized, black sweatshirt skims against her thighs. Both it and the strap of her tank top slide down her shoulder as she moves towards the fridge to his left.

"Hey, kiddo," Voight greets turning on his barstool to watch her wrench open the fridge door and retrieve a bottle of water. She looks like her head is here despite her disheveled appearance, and Voight knows immediately that the smile on her face isn't forced when she turns back around and catches the frown on his face, when she sets the now opened bottle of water on the counter and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder

"Don't look so disappointed," Erin instructs with a smile that causes her dimple to concave in and the frown to fall from Voight's face. "Your girl's gettin' cleaned up and will be out in a moment."

"Halstead know you call her that?" Voight questions and Erin pauses mid-drink with the water bottle pressed against her lips as she frowns, as she tells Hank not to tell Jay about that one because he gets jealous about this kind of thing. And both Erin and Jay's lips twist upward at the memory of Jay's complete indignation when he learned from an off-the-cuff comment in the bullpen one morning that Atwater considers Ruzek his brother.

"Halstead treatin' you two okay? He's helpin' out?" Hank asks despite already knowing the answer because Erin and that unnamed baby she gave birth to a couple of weeks ago are his girls and he's going to worry, going to wonder about whether or not they're okay.

Has since Erin called him back when she was sixteen wanting to get out at two in the morning and Camille just looked at him and didn't even bat an eye as she told him to go get his girl while she fixed up the spare bedroom. Has since Halstead walked out into that waiting room at Chicago Med at two in the morning with a slightly dazed look in his eyes and a ridiculous grin on his face to announce that the baby is a girl – six pounds, five ounces, and screaming like a banshee.

"Cause if he's not, just say the word and I'll have him back on patrol."

"No, he's been great. Really," Erin adds when she sees Voight's eyebrows are pitched in a silent questioning of what she's saying. She taps her hand against the laundry basket still sitting atop the counter as though its existence should answer Voight's question without her having to go into detail. "He's a good house husband."

"But not enough to actually marry you," Voight gruffly replies before taking another drink of his beer, and he watches over the bottom of the bottle as Erin's eyebrows pitch. As she offers him one of sassy, wide-eyed looks that let him know that he's on thin ice with her.

"Not this again," she says with a roll of her eyes. An exasperated sigh trails the end of her comment because Hank's been bringing this particular topic up repeatedly over the past thirty or so weeks, but it's like a burr in his side and he can't seem to let it go. Especially not after his granddaughter was born out of wedlock with a question mark where her last name should be.

"You two wanted to play house, and you ended up with a baby. Now, you've gotta do the right thing. Let Halstead make an honest woman out of you and give that baby his name."

"She has his last name," Erin testily snaps, and her eyes burn bright with hostility despite the haze of her sleep deprivation. "And I don't know what's gonna happen down the road, but I don't need a piece of paper or a ring on my finger to know that he's going to show up, okay? He's here. I'm here. We show up for one another. That's our deal."

Hank hums noncommittally in response as he takes another drink from the bottle in his hand because he knows the conversation is rapidly approaching a dead end, knows Erin will eventually grow tired of this and show him the door before Halstead brings out that baby for him to hold. And he also knows that one day Erin's going to be eating her words because Halstead's a pretty traditional guy and he's already got an engagement ring stashed in his desk over at the district and Voight's permission – or, directive, really – to propose.

So, Voight lets the topic go choosing instead to ask Erin how she's holding up, and there's a short pause as Erin takes a long drink from her water bottle, as this somewhat blank and distant look settles over her features replacing the animosity that was previously radiating off of her. It's a look that worries him, that causes Hank to reach out and uncharacteristically squeeze Erin's hand.

"I wish Camille was here."

The softly spoken confession is interrupted by the cackle of the baby monitor, by the male voice gently asking the tiny infant curled against his chest who the man seated at the kitchen counter is as he steps out into the living room. And Erin's hand slides out of Hank's grasp as she nudges for him to go see the baby, to get off the stool and go hold his girl.

He meets Halstead halfway between the kitchen and the bedroom; flippantly tells Halstead that this isn't his first time at the rodeo when the younger man tries to tell him he needs to sit down first. And then that tiny bundle is being passed into his arms, pressed against his chest so the heat of her body radiates through the thickness of his leather coat. Her tiny fists still have that wrinkly skin of a newborn and her ears are practically covered by his thumb when he reaches up to cradle her head, but she's a little more alert this time and her piercing blue eyes are looking straight at his brown ones.

One blink. Two.

And then as though she realizes this is her grandpa and this a safe place, the little girl yawns and lets her eyes flutter close. Releases a contented sigh as Hank runs his hand down her small back, as he places a gentle kiss against the dirty blonde wisps of hair covering her head, as he whispers in her tiny ear that her Pop-Pop's got her.

"Oh, you're good," Erin says from behind him, and Voight turns around to see both her and Halstead leaning against the counter looking at him with slightly amazed looks in their eyes.

"Like you said, she's my girl," Hank replies with a smirk on his lips.

"Hey," Halstead cries out indignantly as he pulls another article of clothing – small, black pants that Voight hopes are for the baby – from the laundry basket. His outrage causes the baby in Hank's arms to stir, and both the little girl's mom and her grandpa proceed to glare at her father for daring to wake her up. Hank gently runs his hand down the little girl's back one more time as Erin reaches out to squeeze Jay's hand, leans over to whisper something that causes Halstead's lips to pull into a wide grin.

The three of them stand silently around the kitchen for a moment – Jay folding laundry, Erin polishing off her bottle of water, and Hank cuddling the now slumbering infant close – before Hank spots that somewhat blank and distant look in Erin's eyes again and the proverbial banana peel in the middle of the road.

"Hey, Halstead, that lasagna I brought for dinner needs some bread to go with it," Hank says in a quiet yet gruff voice gesturing towards the casserole dish on the counter with a nod of his head. "Why don't you go pick some up?"

Hank's tone of voice leaves little room for negotiation, but Halstead still glances from him to Erin with a questioning look on his face. He hesitates until Erin tells him to go, plants a quick kiss against her forehead in an unusual display of affection for the two of them in front of Voight, and then exits the apartment with a promise that he'll be right back.

Voight waits until he hears the click of the apartment door, waits until Erin has settled onto the barstool he abandoned before he walks around the counter to stand next to her. He keeps a careful hold on the little girl in his arms freeing up his right hand so he can reach out and squeeze her shoulder, hold onto her and let her know that he's here. Not as her boss and not as her friend, but as her father figure.

"Kiddo, you know Camille would've been here, if she could," Hank reminds Erin as she continues to stare off towards the cabinets, continues to pick and peel at the wrapper on her bottle of water. "Would've had to drag her out of here in handcuffs."

"You wouldn't have dared," Erin retorts with a derisive snort because the few years she lived with Hank and Camille was enough to show her who actually ran the Voight household. Who drove and who was the house husband.

The tearing of the label on the water bottle is the only sound emanating throughout the apartment as Erin pauses for a moment, as Hank wearily releases his hold on her shoulder and watches her try to find the words she needs to explain exactly what's going on in her head.

"Why couldn't she be there?" Erin questions still refusing to make eye contact with him. Her voice is raspy and filled with the kind of desperation that Hank hates to hear. "Why couldn't she be a good mom?"

"Who? Camille?" Voight replies as anger begins to radiate off of him in waves. Because Camille went through surgery, two rounds of chemotherapy, and radiation to try to be here tonight. Because Camille was the best mom Hank could have ever asked for Justin – and Erin – to have.

And the shift is his mood causes the baby to stir slightly, but she settles again when Hank runs his free hand up and down the baby's back and she feels the soft strum of Hank's fingers against her spine, when she presses her tiny ear against his chest and picks on the steady drum of his heartbeat.

"Bunny," Erin replies as she tears the final strip of paper off the plastic water bottle. She drops her head slightly, focuses her intense gaze not on Hank or on her baby but rather on the litter of paper on the counter in front of her. And then she's pulling at the pieces; angrily tearing them into smaller and smaller chunks. "I get addiction. I know how hard it is to pull yourself out of that. But she couldn't stop. Not for me. Not for Teddy."

"Erin, your mom's sick. More so than just bein' an addict," Hank gruffly, forcefully replies, and his features deepen even further into a frown as Erin nods her head in agreement, as tears begin to well up in her eyes. Careful not to jostle the baby too much, Hank reaches out again to squeeze Erin's shoulder, to try and drag her attention away from the scraps of paper in front of her to him. "That's on her. Not you. Not your brother."

"Yeah, I know that, but I'm not exactly perfect myself and–"

"That's why you told Halstead to get rid of the hard stuff," Voight says as he finally connects the dots, as he starts to see the logic Erin has twisted herself up in. And he blanches at the suggestion cuddling that tiny, perfect baby closer to him and leaning forward so he can look Erin straight in the eye. "You think you're gonna start using again?"

"No, no, no," Erin immediately snaps copying Halstead's emphatic refusal from early as she shakes her head side to side. And then she sweeps her teary eyes from him to the infant curled against his chest, reaches out with a shaky hand to brush down the scrap of dirty blonde hair that has cow-licked around the back of the baby's skull. "I'm not gonna do that. Not to Jay. Not to you and the rest of Intelligence. Not to myself. And, especially, not to her because I don't want do to her what my mom did to me. Because I love her in a way I can't explain."

"I know. It's the same way I feel about Justin and you," Voight replies softly as he gently thumbs the baby's ear, as he waits to Erin to relieve him of the heavy worry her comments tonight have yoked around his neck.

"I'm afraid I'm gonna screw her up," Erin softly confesses as she trails her fingers down the length of the baby's arm. "And maybe if Camille was here, then–"

"Then she'd tell you that all parents – bad ones and good ones – screw their kids up at some point. I screwed up with trying to keep Justin out of jail when that's what he needed, and I screwed up with you after Nadia's death."

"That was on me," Erin replies with an emphatic shake of her head. And then she pauses, allows the silence to settle over the space as she drinks in the sight of her daughter's thick eyelashes and her chubby cheeks and the little spot to the right of her lips that Jay is convinced is a dimple their baby inherited from her mom.

"You tell Halstead any of this?"

"Sometimes," Erin confesses in a low, raspy tone that Voight has to strain to hear as she ignores Hanks' question and gently brushes the back of her fingers against the baby's chubby cheeks, "I think the best thing I'll ever do for her is give her Jay as her dad. He's crazy about her."

"Doesn't mean I don't worry that I'm going screw her up," Jay interrupts, and both Erin and Voight twist around with wide eyes and bodies that instinctively move to protect the baby against intruders.

"I got halfway to the store and realized I forgot my wallet," Jay explains as he raises his hands in mock surrender because he's pretty sure he saw Erin and Voight both reaching towards their waists despite the fact that neither of them are carrying a gun at this point. Because he feels like an intruder on a private moment that Voight clearly didn't want him around for since Voight sent him on a fool's errand to buy bread and all.

But he presses ahead anyways stepping towards Erin, sliding his hand into hers when he reaches her, and giving it a comforting squeeze because he's just as crazy about Erin as he is about their baby. And he's reminding her that she knows about his dad and how he also didn't have the best role model for his new role growing up despite the fact that Voight, who doesn't really know any of this, is standing in their kitchen because he just wants to help Erin understand that she's not alone in her fears.

"Maybe we should send her to live with Hank?" Erin quips glancing over her shoulder back at Voight. "He can already get her to sleep, and he can probably agree on a name for her."

"Yeah, but we'd miss her too much," Jay replies before Voight can interject that he much prefers being a grandfather, that he's not about to sign up for another thirty years of watching his girl leave a string of broken hearts behind her. "Wouldn't even make it an hour before we'd be over there breaking down his door."

"You? Definitely," Erin replies with a smirk. One that falters as Jay shakes his head, as he leans inches from her face and tells her not to lie to him because they both know it's killing her to let Voight hold the baby since she barely even lets Halstead hold her.

"I only hold her when she nurses," Erin retorts sneaking a glance over her shoulder at the baby. "It's not my fault your girl's gotta eat all the time."

The wide, ridiculous grin on Jay's face tells Voight that there's more to that comment, but Hank not sure he wants to know as he presses another kiss against the baby's head, as rubs his hand against her back one more time before announcing that all this talk about Erin nursing is his cue to go and offering to let Halstead take the baby from him. The younger man doesn't hesitate to snatch her back, to cuddle her tiny body close and pepper kisses against her head while Voight bumps his arm against Erin's back and asks her to walk him out.

They make their way past the stroller and the shoes lined up by the door in silence, and it isn't until he's standing the open doorway that Voight reaches out to pull Erin into a hug. She squirms a bit, fights him as he teasingly tugs on her ear, and then wraps her arms around him so she can squeeze him tight.

"You've got this, kid. I'm proud of you, and Camille would have been, too," Voight reminds her in a low, gravelly voice, and he can practically feel her smile against his shoulder before he lets her out of his embrace. Before her places one hand on her shoulder and looks at her with the expression of a stern, overprotective father. "But you gotta talk to Halstead and you gotta give that baby a name, you hear?"

"Yeah," Erin replies with a nod of her head before swallowing the lump in her throat and defensively crossing her arms over her chest. A copycat of his own stance, Camille would have pointed out had she been here.

"You call me if you need anything, okay?" Hank instructs, and he lifts his gaze from Erin's nodding head to watch Halstead crisscross back and forth across the living room with the tiny infant curled against his chest. And Hank is careful to keep his voice low, to keep from waking the baby as he calls out to Halstead and says, "You show up on Monday without giving my granddaughter a name and you're on patrol. End of discussion."

"Uh, yeah, boss," Halstead agrees with the panicked look on his face that Voight had hoped to see when he arrived here tonight. And with that, with one last goodnight to Erin and the baby, Voight steps out of the doorway and into the hallway. He waits to hear the deadbolt thrown behind him before he heads down three flights of stairs and steps out into the cool October night.

It's past one in the morning before Voight parks his SUV in front of his house, before he wearily heads up the porch steps towards the front door. Two games of pinochle and a beer at the social club had turned into a couple of hours of bragging about his grandson in South Carolina and his new granddaughter here in Chicago and listening to the old timers talk about how proud Camille would have been.

So he's a little bit wary when he feels the buzz of his cell phone, when he fishes it out of his pocket and sees Erin's name across the screen. Yet his concern is replaced by a smile when opens her text and reads her message because he knows his girls are gonna be okay and because he really would have had to handcuff Camille in order to get her to come home with him and leave little Lydia Camille Halstead in the care of her parents.


End file.
